Dear Mr. Carr:
Thank you for your letter of April 21, 2006. I agree with your
sentiment that a voluntary agreement would have been highly
desirable, and certainly that was my goal throughout the
negotiation process. As you know, although our teams agreed on most
work rules during the nine months of negotiation and four weeks of
mediation, fundamental issues separated the parties in the end and
seemingly could not be resolved. While it was never my desire to
send our dispute to Congress, because our statute requires impasses
to be submitted to Congress, at this point that is the appropriate
forum to assess the reasonableness of both sides’ positions.
This contract has profound implications for the FAA budget and for
the rest of the FAA’s professional workforce, not to mention
the taxpayers.
Candidly, I think you have mischaracterized the final days of
mediation. Both sides agreed with the federal mediation service
that we were at impasse. (You had issued a press release on March 31 announcing as
much.) While you claim that we were making progress,
in fact, the “best and final” offer NATCA made to the
agency was worse than your previous offer, while the agency offer
that NATCA rejected put another $200 million on the table for the
benefit of our current controller workforce. To say I was
disappointed when we received your response would be an
understatement.
At this late date,
resuming collective bargaining makes little sense, particularly
while you are simultaneously seeking to change the impasse
procedure that Congress has rightly established. Our two sides are
like “ships passing in the night.” Contrary to your
claims of a “pay cut,” the agency’s proposal
fully protects the existing salary and benefits of the current
workforce and over 80% of the premium pays. Our proposal also
guarantees annual locality increases and brings controllers into an
incentive-based pay structure, while at the same time establishing
a fair and competitive pay scale for our new hires. Your proposal
takes a very different course.
We never came close to an agreement for three primary reasons.
First, the union has rejected every one of our proposals for
meaningful reduction in new hire pay bands, even though the
agency’s proposal establishes a competitive pay scale under
which the maximum base pay for new hire controllers at our highest
level facilities is more than the maximum base pay of a GS-14.
Second, NATCA has repeatedly rejected the idea of performance-based
compensation and insisted on returning, after a three year hiatus,
to the current system of guaranteed annual pay hikes regardless of
agency or individual performance. As you know, Congress gave the
FAA personnel reform and directed the FAA to become more
performance-based. Consequently, much of the agency’s staff
now receives pay increases not as a guarantee, but rather as a
result of their performance. We believe the same performance pay
principles that apply to other FAA employees should apply to the
controller workforce as well. Third, while we were able to reach
agreement on many non-economic issues, there were several important
work rule issues that we did not resolve. These work rules
fundamentally affect management’s ability to operate an
efficient air traffic system. Exhaustive negotiation over these
three issues yielded no real progress.
For more than nine months, NATCA has had the opportunity to
address these fundamental issues and to date has not done so. Even
in your most recent letter, you present no new proposal. Absent an
about-face by NATCA on these core issues, I don’t see how
further negotiations would produce anything more than costly delay.
(Since negotiation began last year, the current agreement has cost
the taxpayers an additional $80 million in pay raises, widening the
42% gap between controllers and the rest of the FAA workforce and
putting additional pressure on our budget.) Any contract that does
not fully address these fundamental issues will permanently
disadvantage the agency, which I cannot accept in good
conscience.
Sincerely,
Marion C. Blakey
Administrator